E 340 
•fl4 fl42 

/Copy 1 



1 



'r KEMARKS ^ 

On the Attack of the '•Famili/ ^gis'' iipon Jiulqe Allen. 



^ 



For somo months past the JE^^ has been longing to 
attack Jndfije Allen with far nior<? venom than it has had 
^-rtrtfTige to tject. It is i^ow not man} veekri since the 
senior editor of that paper, under the pretence of a com- 
plunentary notice of Judge Allen's appointment to the 
bench of the Supreme Court, ventured to stab his rep- 
utation by charging him with a purpose to dissolve the 
I nion. When the heir apparent of that paper was, in a 
jiioment of hypocritical congratulation, suddenly but not 
unkindly rebuked by the Judge for falsely aspersing his 
character, he cringed under the reproof, and meanly 
apologized for his deliberate scandal by attributing it to 
haste and inadvertena/. But the animal that can inadvert- 
entlj/, and Avithout provocation, go out of its way to strike 
its fangs mto the passing traveller, should not be suffered 
to lurk by the way-side without putting the public on 
th'?ir fTiirtrd J»g^>'»<at its j»»b'^iitv-n".d its A'enoxn. I£ Jxld^^ 
Allen had been a man of trick and perverse ambition ; if 
the course of his life had marked him as greedy for office ; 
if, instead of having exliibited a rare indifference to the 
loaves and fishes of party or popular favor, he had, like 
some whom we miaht name, hankered after and voraciously 
snatched at every loaf and slice and crumb which this 
party held out to-day, and that to-morrow, the ^Egis would 
have been less entitled to our animadversion, and less 
deserAing of chastisement from that community it has been 
anxious to impose upon. But that paper is not enough 
understood by those whose interest it is to know and de- 
spise it. The bland accents of a demagogue ma}- come 
from the heart of a tyrant ; and he who flatters the public 
with honied praises, may utter liis sweetest words whuii 
intent on stabbing its most faithful friend. The JE<As 
should never be looked upon except as a family paper in 
the most selfish siguificancy of the phrase. This plain and 
demonstrable fact the public have no right not to know, or 
to lose sight of The CA'idence of the fact is so full and 
clear, that to deny it would be an example of effrontery not 
less gross than the fact itself For nearly half a century 



.-.^ 



the JEgis has served o?ie famUy under the pretext of serv- 
hig the public ; and that family it has served with equal 
devotion and constancy. By that family the ^Egis was 
established; in that family it has been owned, by that 
familv it has been edited, and for that family it has been 
used \o an extent and with an efficacy which it hardly be- 
comts the mtoHigfmce and the honor of the county to admit. 
Not to call* the j^Egis a family paper, would be to miscall 
it ; and iioi to bring before the public this its narrow ami, 
habitual use and constant effect, would be to keep silence 
at a time vrhen the public has the most need of a full and 
fearless voice, that it may know the why and the wherefore 
of influences Avhich, without such knowledge, would not be 
likely to be baffted or resisted. 

The press is a power of no ordinary might, and it should 
be the public's. It is notoriously the power by which 
offices are filled and emptied from year to year. In town 
and county, in state and nation, the press is the great 
machine which lifts men up and casts them down. In 
short it is the mighty instrument which wields individual 
and public destiny. Evident as is this truth to all, none 
know i! so. well as those who have used it long and actively 
to raise themselves into power. 

Within the limits of the county of "Worcester, it so hap- 
pens there is one family not marked by extraordinary 
gifis of genius, unusual resources of wisdom, or suspected 
excess of virtue, who within the last half centurv have 
enjoyed more, and more important, public offices, and with 
more constancv than anv other familv, however numerous, 
however endowed, and however virtuous, in the whole 
commonwealth. So much a matter of course has been 
their possession of office, that the public Avould be far more 
puzzled to find Avhen they were out, than when they were 
in. To call all this the natural effect of marked superi- 
ority and desert, would be to contradict the most obvious 
truth; and to call it mere luck, would be as rational as to 
toss up coppers all day and expect all heads up at every 
fall. For a uniform effect there must be a uniform cause. 
And for a long succession of extraordinary effects, a steady, 
extraordinary cause must be sought to explam it. And 
how, then, shall the problem be solved, that one family 
should " so get the start of this majestic Avorld, and bear the 
palm alone ?' How has the great power that lifts up one 
and casts down another, happened to work such a family 



result? It is easily explained: ^family press has done it. 
That is all, and that is enough: that is indeed an extraor- 
dinary cause, and the extraordinary effect is but the natural 
consequence. During nearly half" a century oi family office 
holdiiic/, the ^Egis has been a family paper iov family ojficc- 
making. For nearly the -whole of that long term, that 
paper has been owned, jointly or in part, or been under 
mortoao;e to, or edited bv, that family. It has been under 
its thumb, and used to subserve its interests, with the most 
selfish fidelity. As there has been no such instance of the 
monopoly of office, so there has been no such instance of a 
family paper. 

During that long period of press-ownership and ofhce- 
monopoly, the ^gis has, both clandestinely and unblush- 
ingly, as the case might require, been used to bepraise 
and elevate its owners and their satellites, and to defame 
^ and depress such as would not yield their personal virtue 
IT- and independence to family dictation for family promotion. 
1 In short, the ^Egis, in all the ups and downs of party, 
3 whether in old democratic or later whig ascendancy, like 
the famed Vicar of Bray, has had but one principle, ojfice, of- 
fice, OFFICE. In all nights this has been its pole-star, and 
in all days this the luminary it has worshipped with flaming 
zeal and devoutest constancy. The result we have already 
stated. Many have wondered at the effect, while but few 
have understood the cause. The cause and the effect are 
adequate to each other ; and the fomier being explained, 
the mystery of the latter vanishes. The public will no 
longer feel the blow of an unseen hand. Hereafter, when 
it strikes, it will strike with a seen motive, and the hollow 
pretence of ''patriotism" will not conceal the malignity of 
• sheer and arros'ant selfishness. 

And yet this same ^Egis, this identical family paper, is 
the very one that inadvertently would make the public 
believe that Judge Allen is a traitor, aiming to dissolve the 
Union — a man far better known for declining than for 
accepting office — one who has repeatedly refused • such 
offices as honorable men might honorably aspire to. But, 
if his past and well knoMu life is any pledge of consistency, 
he will never, for any office in the public gift, stoop to the 
meanness of keeping a pensioned herald of his own fame ; 
he will never consent to elevate himself, his kith or kin 
by his own or a subsidized press. They who have monop- 
olized that meanness will never find a competitor in Judge 



Allen. He has neither skill nor aptitude for such a voca- 
tion. Even if he could consent to compete in such an 
enterprise, rivalry would be hopeless. Half a century's 
experience is a capital that should warn a novice to leave 
off competition before meddling with it. 

We should have passed over in silence the earlier, 
unprovoked assault of the ^Egis on Judge Allen, had not 
that paper, assummg to be the oracle of the public, while 
in fact the devoted engine of seliishness, again inadvertently 
assailed the very same individual to Avhom it had, so few 
weeks ago, hypocritically and cringingly apologized. The 
last number of that paper, true to its venomous instinct, 
has charged Judge Allen with what it represents as a base 
dereliction of duty — an abuse and perversion of a high 
public trust — a violation at once of personal and public 
honor, while a chain-bound member of the late ' ^^ hig 
National Convention. If the age of a certain venomous 
reptile is known by the number and size of its rattles, we 
might on the same principle attribute to the editor of the 
^gis a fullness of years beyond his otherwise apparent and 
-:ble youth. The naturalist who has studied the 
-^. . i will be at no loss to determme, from infallible 
rriRrks, the maturity of the individual. 

. the edi or of a family pajier would fain make the 
c fJiat all honor and integrity reside and abide 
^ViCn ins magnanimous self, and that Judge Allen has, of a 
sudden, turned his back on those principles he has so long 
looked in the face ; that he has all at once become recreant 
to that high character for which he is so well known and 
has been so much honored in and by this Commonwealth. 

And is this in reality the idea of personal honor and 
public virtue, held and proclaimed by the editor of the 
^Egis, that when one becomes a member of such a Conven- 
tion he parts with his own manhood to worship whatever 
idol intrigue and treachery may carve out for his abase- 
ment 1 — that at the sound of the so-called whig cornet, 
flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery and dulcimer, and all kinds 
of ratifying music, he be ready to fall down and worship 
the image falsely set up, or that same hour be cast into the 
midst of a burning fiery furnace ? If this is tlie great idea 
of honor which fills that editor's bram and moves his 
mighty heart, let him have the whole of it — yes, all, — it 
is a fit monopoly for the editor of a family jjress ; but of 
this let him be assured, that he lives in a conununity in 



which liis base counterfeit of lienor will not be circulated 
without detection and infamy. He may call it wlii^j^ gold, 
lettered with the inscription of whig liberty, but the rust 
and canker of slavery are on it ; the image and the super- 
scription belie each other. 

Did not Judge Allen do himself, his District, and his State 
an honor — did he not honor humanity — did he not strike 
a blow for principle, when, in the face of the most formida- 
ble tyranny, the tyranny of party rancor, ambition, and 
greedy lust of oihce, he calmly and tirmly stood up in the 
midst of that crowded CouAention, with its ten thousand 
surrounding vociferous ratitiers, he, in the ancient spirit of 
his native Commonwealth, and m her behalf, " spurised 
THE BRIBE ? " Massachusetts will not forget these words, 
and in the fast coming campaign for old fashioned whig 
principles, those memorable words will be shouted as the 
battle-word of her victorious legions. 

Was it not the very time of times for Judge Allen to 
utter just what he said, when his vote was demanded by 
the drill and disciplme of an army of delegates, "v^liose 
marching and counter-marching, whose wheeling, halting, 
display of columns and final charge, had been determmed 
by the clandestine tactics of slave-holders and free State 
renegades at "Washington — a subject on which a lai'ge- 
chapter we refrain at present from recitmg ? Was it not yet 
enough, Mr. iEgis, that the free States have been msidted 
and trampled on for so many patient and forbearing years I 
— that they have been practically shut out of the Lnion — 
that they have been excluded from the highest public 
trusts — that thev have been made the mere hewers of wood 
and di'awers of Avater for an iron-heeled despotism — that 
high capacity and stem integrity ha^e not been passports 
to public office and public honor, which of themselves re- 
quired nothing else ] that subserviency to the basest insti- 
tution which curses the country and scandalizes mankind, 
has been the great, the indispensable qualification for 
national patronage'? that the constitution has been noto- 
riously and outrageously violated to wrest from a neigh- 
boring country her free soil, to sow it ^^•ith the curse and the 
cruelty of slavery ^ Was Judge Allen, as the Delegate of this 
Congressional District, bound in honor and conscience to 
ratify that which went and was contrived to ratify this 
domination over the free States '? A^'as he sent from this 
District to acquiesce in and help forward a nomination that 



S 

•i 



I 



I 



I 



was gotten up and controlled by the master spirits of des- 
potism, and who had imposed it on that Convention for no 
other purpose than to secure and spread wider that baleful 
oppression ? Was he sent conscience-bound, for himself 
and his constituents, to jom the shout for another slave- 
holder, who had doggedly refused to intimate his party 
predilections, and from whom, in the last hour of necessity, 
had been stjueezed a few dubious hints of Avhat he politi- 
cally is or Avill be ] Did the constituents of Judge Allen 
tie his honor and manhood, neck and heels, at home, and 
toss his s^jiritless body into the national whig convention, 
to be the automaton of a cheated party, to cast a vote 
and swing a hat by the wire-pulling of an invisible hand ] 
Did they expect or desire him to be the instrument of a 
mere party crank, itself turned by a secret hand, to register 
his and their vote for another slave-holder to be the chief 
magistrate of twenty-five millions of people in thirty States, 
who had given no proof of statesmanship but his life in 
the camp, or his slaughters on the battle-field of an uncon- 
stitutional war, waged for the perpetration of a crime 
against all the commandments of God and all the rights of 
mankind ] 

We know not precisely and fully whence the editor of 
rhe ^.oJS deiived his notions of dutv and masnanimitv, but 
We do Iviiow that an honorable people will scorn to endorse 
■f-^'^ni or. bare aiiy thing to do with them, except to despise 
such a memorial of their aiitbr.?''^ -foDy and shame. 

But, forsooth ! the ^gis pomjDously proclaims the sin 
of Judge Allen as having been committed in the " open 
conclave of Massachusetts and Virginia!'' What the ven- 
erable editor means by '■^ open conclave'' we shall not puzzle 
our wits to discover. If he intends to lull his readers Avith 
the solemn fact that Massachusetts and Virginia were 
locked np out of doors, he is welcome to all the income of 
such wisdom. If he hopes by fustian and grandiloquence 
to humbug men of a decent understanding, he will impose 
on nothing but his own stupidity. 

But the learned editor would have the public believe 
that Judge Allen could not, without forfeiting his honor, 
speak out his manly sentiments m the Convention, because, 
alas ! it was " a National Convention," " gathered together 
once more to consult on the general velfare, and to resolve 
for the common good?" Alack-a-day! And is a representa- 
tive, when acting as a representative, bound to the folly 



and madness of the majority ] This is a new leaf in the 
book of free princi])lcs and representative ri«i^hts. The 
sentiment is steeped in the very (>ssence of tyranny. Touis 
Phillipe, "when in power, wonld liave stereotyped this 
article of your faith as the iie phta ultra ortliodoxy of 
despotism. It is the very anchor of hope to the American 
slaveholder. Let the North imbibe this doctrine, and the 
dough is all leavened in the lump, and ready to be moulded 
into any form of dishonor the South may require. 

And is not Congress a '■'■ National'^ Congress, "gathered 
together once more to consult upon the (jeneral welfare, 
and to resolve for the common good \ Aye, and who knows 
but that it is as much in '• open conclave " as '• Massachu- 
setts and Virginia" ? And pray tell us, ^Ir. ^T^gis, what 
better reason could von have offered for Judge Allen's 
declaration of his free, deliberate opinion as to what the 
'-'■ general welfare " and the '• common good " required in 
such an emergency as this \ Does not your own argument 
destroy what it was meant to support? Must ]Mr. Hudson, 
the worthy representative in Congress from the same Dis- 
trict which Judge Allen represented in Convention, must 
he. because Congress is a '■^ JVationdl"' Congress, in '■'open 
conclave" with " f 7>Y//«m," "to consult upon the general wel- 
fare and to resolve for the common good,'' vote with a sla^-e- 
holding or slave-ridden majority to expend 150,000,000 
dollars for the conquest and dismemberment of Mexico, to 
perpetuate the slave power of the national government, and 
to spread wider its cruel inflictions, and to perpetuate 
those cruelties through future generations? Away with 
such nonsense to your masters. It must have been fabri- 
cated for your •• Mrginia" masters, and not for home con- 
sumption. Perhaps some crmnbs of comfort may drop 
from their table. 

But the whole explanation of the trouble is, that Judge 
Allen is too true a Avhig for those who are false. The 
whig spirit of '76, which declared tliat ''all men are born 
free and equal," is yet alive in liim. He does not wear 
the livery of a whig to conceal, l)ur to make known his 
principles. Tlie day is at hand when all true whigs of 
Massachusetts will honor him for his open, fearless mani- 
festation of whig principles in the Convention at Phila- 
delphia. 

But the young gray-beard of the -I'gis — when was he a 
whig ? How long has anybody known him as such ? 



6 



011 782 541 3 



/ 



When did he put on his new coat in which to read homi- 
lies to Judge Allen 1 and when will he not be ready to 
cringe and fa^\^l in any garb that will commend him to 
the smiles of rising power? Let the public mark him, 
watch him, rebuke him, so long as he wields the power of 
a family press against " the general welfare " and the 
" common good." 

Let the public be more than ever on their guard at this 
critical juncture of events. Deceptions will crowd from all 
quarters to cheat men out of their principles, and to per- 
suade them to violate their plainest and most imperative 
duty. The present season is full of momentous conse- 
quences. An unusual combination of events gives new 
encouragement to be steadfast for the true, the right, and 
the 'good. The platform of liberty is becoming broader 
and firmer to men's view, and more are ready to plant their 
feet upon it than the fears of many believed to see. Let 
no man, however "honest" he may have been called, 
beguile you of your principles, or turn you for a single 
moment from their consistent measures. Set your faces as 
a flint, at once and forever, against the fables with which 
the Atlas and its brood of satellites will fill the air, to 
deceive, if possible, the very elect of freedom's host. When 
tiiey cry, " Lo, here,'' or " Lo, there,'" believe it not. They 
will tell you, Taylor is a w^ool-dyed whig, and has ex- 
pressed his intention not to use the veto power, except in 
extreme cases. Remember that he is a large slaveholder, 
and that to such the interest of slavery always makes an 
extreme case. Even now the ridiculous story has been put 
into circulation, that General Taylor is opposed to the 
extension of slavery, although the w^hole Whig South in 
Convention, as one man, hustled him into nomination on 
account of his well known hostility to the principles of the 
Wilmot Proviso. And, we are ashamed and grieved to say 
it, even our reputed " honest " Senator at Washington has 
defiled his hands by casting into circulation the gross and 
stupid falsehood. Is it not time even for the careful to be 
more than ever on their ouardl Let every man make 
principle his watch-word ; and, whoever may come into 
power, nothing will so prevent his doing mischief as the 
firm maintenance and emphatic expression of your princi- 
ples ; while nothing will gi\'e those principles future and 
greater power so certainly as their present and most deci- 
sive use. Plus Ultra. 



\ 



«, 



1 

'I 



